Forget the current polling as between Hillary and Elizabeth Warren. It pits Hillary against someone who “isn’t running.”

For all my criticisms of Warren, and they are extensive, I am convinced that if she ran, she would crush Hillary, just as Obama did.

Warren, as did Obama, has a unique ability to demagogue the core Democratic narrative of victimhood in ways that would make Hillary blush. She is more cunning than Hillary, more popular with the base, would bring an excitement the contrived Ready-for-Hillary movement could only dream of. Democrats may be “ready” for Hillary, but they don’t really want her.

Face it, Democrats, in your heart of hearts, you want Elizabeth Warren to run. She is the next One you have been waiting for. You can imagine yourselves singing:

1. Life is unpredictable. Clinton will be 69 years old on inauguration day 2017, nearly the oldest president ever. She has had a few health scares. By all accounts, she left her previous four-year stint in government service exhausted. She might not run, and the Democrat in second place in the polls, Vice President Joe Biden — 74 on inauguration day — is too old to be president. Beyond them, Democrats have nobody — except Elizabeth Warren.

2. Parties need competition. The primary process isn’t just to allow voters to pick a nominee. It’s for the candidates to become better candidates. The rigors of campaigning, the day-to-day jostle with competitors and the stress of high-profile debates all make candidates better. Conversely, a cakewalk through the primaries could leave a nominee in poor fighting shape for a general election. Warren would make Clinton a better candidate, and vice-versa.

3. The Left wants a hero. Clinton has never really excited the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. They see her as an overcautious centrist like her husband, and on top of that, many have never forgiven her for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. Warren, on the other hand, has thrilled the Left with her attacks on inequality, plutocrats and big financial institutions.

4. Hillary ran a dumb campaign in 2008 and might do so again. For a group of seasoned veterans, the 2008 Clinton campaign showed a stunning ignorance of how to win delegates in a Democratic contest. Rival Barack Obama exploited that weakness brilliantly. For example, Obama collected more net delegates by winning the Idaho caucuses, with 21,000 participants, than Clinton did by winning the New Jersey primary, with more than 1 million voters. Clinton just didn’t pay attention to the smaller stuff, particularly the caucuses, and her cluelessness helped Obama win. It might help another rival in 2016.

5. One more time: Life is unpredictable. This is Warren’s only chance to run. She will be 67 on Inauguration Day 2017. (Has any party ever fielded a group as old as Clinton, Biden and Warren?) A run in 2020 or later is out of the question. Hillary, now struggling to define her legacy as Secretary of State, is running on pure entitlement. The only thing about her candidacy that truly excites the Democratic base is that she would be the first woman president. Of course, that applies to Elizabeth Warren, too. And Warren would present a far fresher face to voters than Clinton, who has been in the national spotlight since 1992.

1. IMHO you’re implying that Betty could get the nomination but underperform Hillary in the general election. I tend to agree. Betty radiates negativity (even) more than Hillary does. Underperforming Hillary doesn’t mean Betty would lose.

2. If the GOP puts up Jeb Bush, I will turn in a blank, write-in, or third-party Presidential ballot even if the D’s nominate Trotsky. I’m in a deep-blue state, but I bet there are plenty of impactive voters who feel the same way.

3. Presumably the Clinton machine will not get tripped up in Iowa again, but they could get ambushed by other astroturf efforts on behalf of Warren.

The professor’s “Run, Elizabeth, Run” comment makes me nervous. I made the mistake of thinking I wanted Obama to beat Hillary because no country in its right mind would elect a Marxist, first-term Senator whose only other job had been “Community Organizer,” and look how that turned out.

For that matter, I didn’t think Massachusetts would elect a fraud who used phony race preferences to advance her career, either. Who knows what the majority, low-info voters might do with the first *wink* “Native American” woman running for POTUS.

Oh, well, “what difference, at this point, does it make?” We just have to beat whomever they run, to save this country.

“Some blogger” is probably not going to be invited to Miz Beth’s inauguration. However, if Miz Beth does does get the nomination and does win, I would like to own the liquor store closest to “some blogger’s” house.

I have a hard time believing #4.
I think she threw it for promises. stuff like everything she tried to do in the 90’s he would (and did) do this time.
gays in military. check
fk up health system. check
reduce military spending and capabilities. check
gobble up more land from the states. check
raise gas prices and energy. check
allow her to travel the world on taxpayers dime cementing her fortune and protecting her from any charges. check

Hillary wants to be President for the power, not in order to institute some program or change, unless that program or change gives her more power. She is about Hillary and everything else is way back on the list of priorities.

If she believes it helps her toward her goal of power, she is for it. If it does not help her pursuit of power, she is either against it or doesn’t care. Hillary no more cares about the health of a poor black child in South Texas than she does about anything that does not benefit her. However, if she can use a poor black child in South Texas for her own ends, she will in a heartbeat.

If Warren and Clinton were to both announce, the GOP then ought to nominate a female too. Just negate the whole ‘first woman president’ thing. I’d go with Susana Martinez, Marsha Blackburn, Sarah Palin, or Lindsey Graham.

Afaic Martinez’s convention speech was terrific & she can connect with independent voters. She deserves consideration for the national ticket if she is decisively reelected governor of her battleground state.

(Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee Hollywood) lost me when she backed SOPA and then tried to back away when the badness of the bill could no longer be disguised. Palin lost me when she resigned.)

You are full of it. Palin sensibly preferred her family’ sand Alaska’s fiscal health to political office given the loophole in the law that allowed Democrats to bring hundred of bogus ethics charges against her.

Palin is the best candidate the GOP has to restore this country to constitutional solvency. High achieving. Brilliant. Deep thinking. Experienced. Proven record of reform. Professional. Capitalist. Incorruptible.

(Okay, you started it…and I’ve become fatalistic enough about the future of this country that I no longer try to mince words…)

I became pro-Palin in 2007 before she went national, and I remained so until her resigning was the last straw. Afaic she had the potential for highest office but made choices that disqualify her. If she wants to operate on the political sidelines & make money thereby, that’s fine with me.

But.

Among other things, I remember how LI’s Kathleen McCaffrey was swarmed by Palinistas back when she ventured a mild reservation about The Divine Sarah. And I remember what a waste of time, effort, and googling it was for me to attempt a good-faith, fact-based discussion with a Palin proponent.

Palin is yesterday’s news and frankly has zero chance of ever winning an election even in Alaska. The Palinistas seem to have a cult-like devotion to her and nobody likes a quitter. As for the ethics charges all she needed to do was walk down the hall to the Alaska Attorney General’s Office (a Republican by the way) and have them handle it and they would most likely have all been thrown out. Instead she preferred to go Hollywood and make tons of money. Good for her but stop giving her qualities she does not possess or thinking she has some broad based national appeal because she doesn’t.

1. CK, I googled this years ago and am not going to repeat that chore. Iirc the acting(?) Alaska AG, a Palin appointee, ruled that state officials could get legal expenses reimbursed for ethics complaints that were found invalid.

2. Although Palin disappointed me, IMHO she is doing more good than harm in her current, coincidentally lucrative role. Hopefully that will continue.

It’s dangerous to root for Elizabeth Warren because you believe she is “unelectable”. I still say the Republican Party has not gotten more conservative, Democrats have shifted the political center leftward and been rewarded for doing so. Allowing radicals to highjack higher education for two generations will do that. Many, perhaps most, Americans now believe “social justice” is a higher value than liberty. At least that’s how they voted recently and its definitely what dominates the culture. As Matthew Continetti asks in his recent column, what are the issues the ruling class cares about today? Answer: diversity, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, gun control, unrestricted migration, sexual autonomy, feminism, environmentalism.

Those are the issues the media and education focuses on. Those are not conservative issues, my friend. Those are a perfect fit an Elizabeth Warren agenda.

The other thing is that Democrats start with a “sticky” electoral college vote of about 225 or so (I forget the exact number but that’s in the ballpark per people like Jay Cost, Michael Barone, Charlie Cook, etc. who analyze and study these things). So Democrats could run a blind, alcoholic chimpanzee and as long as it has a “D” on its jersey, the chimp starts with those electoral votes in his column. Republican candidate starts with something like 175 solid electoral college votes. The rest are technically “in play”, but some lean Democrat and some lean Republican. The point is that it is much easier for Democrats to get to the magic number of 270 electoral votes than Republicans. All Democrats have to do is spend $1 billion to win two or three decent sized “swing states” like Ohio and Florida – both of which went for Obama twice – and we’ll have a fake Cherokee sitting in the Oval Office.

Obama DID NOT crush Hillary. She won all the big states except Illinois and all the swing states. The race ended in a statistical tie. Hillary had a slight lead in votes and pledged delegates. Obama was given the nomination by the superdelegates.

Obama spent twice as much as Hillary and was the media favorite and he still needed help crossing the finish line.

Many super delegates selected the unknown Obama over Hillary out of fear that ticking off black voters would cost the Democrats seats in many other contests. They assumed black would turn put in record numbers to support Obama and that the increased turnout would give them several governor mansions and US Senate seats. The issue to be determined now is how black voters will respond to the whiter than the Pillsbury Dough Boy in a blizzard Warren’s claim to an Affirmative Action hiring preference.

I agree with Maggot. That Obama was elected twice is a severe indictment of the state of the American electorate. American political culture and sophistication is in a deep state of decline. Common Core and the dumbing down of the SAT (which has been dumbed down before) are simply the latest indicators. Common Core is designed to prepare students for community college, nothing more. That any students who graduate from high school (much less attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) are illiterate is a public shame and travesty. But that’s the way it is.

Warren is essentially an Obama. She is an academic lawyer with little academic accomplishment despite a prestigious appointment. She has never managed anything. She is a putative (in her mind) Cherokee. She hits all the progressive hot buttons. For all the LIVs out there, she is novel (woman and “Indian”) and for “free stuff.” What could be better? The LIVs can FEEL so good about electing her!

On the other hand, Clinton has been around forever with all the vulnerabilities that entails. She was a student of Alinsky’s work at Wellesley, advocated for a secret and ludicrous health plan when Bill was President (he told us we got a “twofer” with him and Hillary), a Senator with no meaningful achievements, and a Secretary of State with no accomplishments and a zillion miles of carbon spewing travel to no end (except of course, that while traveling she didn’t actually have to spend any time with Bill). And then there are the catastrophes: Benghazi, the “Arab Spring,” the lies about the “despicable anti-Muslim film,” the lies to the families of those who died in Benghazi, Vince Foster, “Travelgate,” etc., etc., ad infinitum.

I’m just saying that with the electoral college already favoring Democrats before they even have a nominee, and the electorate seemingly more left wing now than its ever been in my life, I think Warren has a far better chance than Prof J does. As things stand now, she probably has a better chance than almost any Republican who manages to get nominated.

Obama did beat Hillary by the super delegates, but he would never have been in a position to do so had she not haughtily assumed she would roll to the nomination.

Except for Texas, Hillary’s vaunted “machine” ignored the “red states” which were mostly caucuses, figuring not to waste money in places she would have no chance of winning in the general. But had she even put a skeleton campaign in place in those states – where she wasn’t lacking for volunteers, but her volunteers had no leadership – the rules would have given her proportional delegates and even losing them all to Obama would leave her with more than enough for the nomination.

Instead, she let Obama sweep many caucuses by default and win far more delegates than he could have if she contested them. If not for that, he was toast.

So she blew an easy win with arrogance. Anyone think she will be more humble this time?

And Hillary isn’t the only one who has aged. Her campaign team was in their prime 20 years ago.

She should be an easy candidate for the GOP to beat but the GOP is not the “Stupid Party” for no reason. She is a liar and a fraud and she does not have the advantage of being black and I am not sure having a vagina is enough to win an national election. Starting with Teddy Kennedy in 1980 and going forward to Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, Jon Kerry and Mitt Romney – the track record of Massachusetts candidates in national elections is not very good. I hope she is the nominee just as the Democrats are pining for Jeb Bush to be our nominee.